Awareness of Perspective-taking

in English Writing

Bai Hong-ai

Yanbian University

Some of the student’s mistakes

can never be eliminated.

The vague awareness of the situation in which the discourse is produced, the identities and roles of the writer and the reader, their relationship, the purpose of the discourse, etc.

Teacher’s headache:

Current paper:

the necessity of the awareness of

perspective-taking in the process of

writing

The children ran around the house.

The children ran around the house.

Move around within the house’s internal space

Fowler (1986) and Xiong Muqing (2001) have categorized 4 kinds of perspectives

(1)    Spatial-temporal perspective

(2)    Narrative perspective

(3)    Ideological perspective

(4)    Perceptional perspective

Short (1994)

The manipulations of perspectives to

the appropriate linguistic realization

(1) Spatio-temporal perspective

present and past tense

demonstrative pronounsadverbials of time, place

deictic verbs

the choice of the proper deictic expressions relating to time and place

(2)    Narrative perspective

the focus of the narration

the proper usage of personal pronouns

definite/indefinite articles

textually referring pronouns

first-person (participant) viewpoint

third-person (non-participant) viewpoint

(3)    Ideological perspective

the proper usage of modal expressions

the lexical choice for proper style, register

(4)    Perceptional perspective

where the information departs (i.e. given

information) and on which it focuses on

(i.e. new information).

RESEARCH ON NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Hypothesis 1:

The root of the personal pronoun errors lies in the students’ vague narrative perspective, which further proves the manipulation of perspective to the linguistic realization of the discourse.Hypothesis 2:

The vagueness of narrative perspective is caused by the writer’s unclear knowledge of the identities and roles of the participants (i.e. the writer himself and his reader(s)).

Table 1

Distribution of Discourse Types of the Students’ Writing Practice

Abstract Diary Practical Narrative Descriptive Expository Argumen

tative

Total

90 226 186 60 30 60 240 892

Table 2:

Errors occurring in 4 subjects caused by vague narrative perspective

S1 S2 S3 S4 TotalNo. of essays 13 13 13 13 52Number of essays with errors and their discourse type

33 argu.

6

5 argu.;

1 expo.

33 argu.

5

4 argu.;

1 expo.

17

15 argu.;

2 expo.

Percentage of essays with errors

23% 46% 23% 38% 33%

①

Dear Victoria,

I am very sorry that I unintentionally neglected to invite you to our party. Before the party, Mary sent invitation to her friends, and I sent to mine. Since you are a friend of ours. I thought she would invite you. So I didn’t. Unfortunately, Mary didn’t, either. Forgive us for our mistake.

Peter

TITLES:

Loving and Being Loved

Family Education

Modern Life, Modern Pressure

Is Beauty So Important?

Brain Drain

Tourism Brings Me Worries

What is Poverty?

What Should Universities Teach Their Students?

Result 1:

The misuse of personal pronouns mostly occurs in the discourse types in which the identities and roles of the writer and reader(s) are not clear.

And the errors occur more to generic reference of the pronouns instead of specific reference.

Result 2:

In the argumentative and expository, the student writers tend to shift from one role to another, from one identity to another, which causes the narrative perspective to shift accordingly.

Problem 1: The writer’s role in the discourse is shifting between a participant and a non-participant;

Problems 2: The writer’s role is shifting between an explicit participant and an implicit participant;

Problem 3: The identities of the writer changes in the same essay, which results in the changes of the reader’s identity.

②

Most of Chinese said that they love our country with heart and soul.

Problem 1: narrative perspective shifts a

non-participant’s a participant’s.

“they” “our”

③

In my opinion, to some extent, we should encourage students to use electronic dictionary in order to get information more quickly, but we can’t rely on electronic dictionary totally. After all, it isn’t our basic tool. I think if we have time, we’d better use the book dictionary, because we can gain more.

Problem 3: the identity of the writer changes:

“we” teachers

students

④ 　

What should all these universities teach their students?

First, they should provide the students all kinds of professional knowledge, …

Second, universities should also teach their students how to behave themselves. … So we shouldn’t neglect the education of the students’ moral characters when they are in the universities.

Third, universities should provide the chances of practicing their skills as much as possible. It is obvious that the aim of our studying is to prepare ourselves well for the social needs. … Problem 1, 2, 3,

universities University teachers

students

Result 3:

The problem of vagueness exists at all levels of a discourse: discourse perspective, paragraph perspective, sentence chunk perspective, and sentence perspective. (See Figure 1 and 2) Among the errors caused by the vague narrative perspective, the majority (79%) of personal pronoun errors is caused by the vague discourse perspective and the vague paragraph perspective.

Figure 1: Errors Caused by Vague Narrative Perspectives at Each

Level of the Discourse

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Subject 1 Subject 2 Subject 3 Subject 4

Discourse P.

Paragraph P.

Sentence ChunkP. Sentence P.

Di scourse P.

Paragraph P.

Sentence ChunkP.Sentence P.

Result 4:

The personal pronouns of generic reference (i.e. “we”, “you”, “they”) are more subject to be chosen wrongly. It further proves that the writer’s uncertainty towards the identities and roles of the reader(s) disturbs his narrative perspective.

⑤

* People often use telephones, you can only hear her voice.

* Now it’s a society of information technology. People are all busy with their own business, so we almost can’t get any time to communicate with others. That makes us isolate from others.

* We have videophone to communicate with your parents.

The writer’s narrative perspective has changed 3 times:

non-participant implicit participant explicit participant

Explicit narrative perspective (“I”)

Implicit narrative perspective (“we”)

writer as a participantfocus: people including the readers (“you”)

writer as a non-participant

focus: people excluding the readers (“they”)

Implicit narrative perspective (“he/they”)

focus: people including the readers (“we”)

Bakhtin’s dialogism: Any language use is a dialogic process.

Widdowson (1984:48) The act of writing is the enactment of an exchange, with the writer taking on the roles of both interlocutors.

Eco (1979:5-7) “The reader, as an active principal of interpretation, is part of the generative process of the text. To make his text communicative, the author has thus to foresees a model of the possible reader supposedly able to deal interpretatively with the expressions in the same ways as the author generatively deals with them.”

Conclusion:

the interrelationship between perspective-

taking and the linguistic realization

Vague Spatio-temporal Perspective

* There is a large population in the world, so the

environment was destroyed. (tense)

* We all thought our school is irresponsible.(tense)

* When I arrived there, I found a woman in front of a tree.

stand there, facing a tree. (adverbial of place)

Vague Ideological Perspective (loaded words)

* He is a freedom fighter. / He is a terrorist. (lexical choice of proper style)

* Peacekeeping forces / occupation army (lexical choice of proper style)

* Do you favor increasing government revenues / taxes to pay for new roads? (lexical choice of proper style)

Vague Perceptional Perspective

*Thirdly, ( ? ) teaches them believe in themselves. Now ( ? ) is a competitive time, if ( ? ) don’t have self-confidence, how ( ? ) challenge the developing technology. (departing point of new information)

*… he told me Tigress always vomited recently and eating nothing, so that ( ? ) lost almost a pound. (departing point of new information)

* Oppositely, in your country, everything you are familiar with. you are familiar with everything (promotion from given to new information)

Implication:

Perspectives connected with the syntactic structure, the semantic structure, as well as the information structure. These levels are co-occurring in our mental or semantic process of the experience and perhaps processed in the same time. Therefore, teaching English writing should enlarge its scope to the discourse level, and to include the practice of perspective taking into the process of writing.

Thanks for your attention !!!